Have you ever eaten something so good it gave you a tongue-gasm?
Do you tend to prefer breakfasts that come with a syrup decanter or three?
Aren’t waffles a serious pain in the dumper to prepare?
And really, don't you think pancakes are more exciting as headwear for small to medium sized mammals*?
Right. Well, here’s what you’re gonna do…
Turn your oven on to 350° F (175° C), then go about getting all this stuff together: 5 cups bread cubes, 4 eggs, 1 1/2 cups milk, 2 tablespoons white sugar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1 tablespoon softened butter, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
Next, mix the eggs, milk, salt, and vanilla all together. Works best if you do this in a large bowl or something similar. Milk and eggs need boundaries or they’ll just run roughshod right over you (figuratively speaking, of course).
Anyway, liberally slather the inside of an 8x8 baking dish with whatever edible lubricant you like – I recommend butter – and then evenly fill the bottom of the dish with bread cubes. Dump the egg/milk mixture all over it, pat the whole mess with butter in random spots, and then let it sit there for a few minutes while you mix the sugar and cinnamon together and whip up a can of frozen orange juice. Some people don’t like coffee, you know.
After you’ve sprinkled the cinna-sugar all over the top of your casserole, stick it in the oven for around 45 minutes. Might take longer. Might not. Just let it get nice and golden brown and try not to freak out when you look in the oven and see it has expanded to forty times its original size. That’s totally normal (and completely humane).
Finally, scoop a big ol’ wad out onto a plate, douche it with your favorite syrup, and push it in your pie-hole. Don’t just gulp it down like a starving Rottweiler, though. Let your tongue take a run at it a few times first; have its fun for a bit. It works hard everyday; helping you talk, picking your teeth, gesturing provocatively to persons of the opposite gender.
C'mon. Go make your tongue some funky French Toast Casserole. You know it’s the right thing to do.
*Yes, I know it’s a dorayaki, not a pancake, and that Oolong has gone on to bunny nirvana. I am also fairly certain they have plenty of syrup there.
The topic today is guitar – specifically the kind that plug in. Why? Because it's my birthday and that's what I want to blab about.
So anyway, here’s an easy lick that enables even intermediate level guitar players to readily throw some ripping scale runs into their improv playing. It goes through 24 notes just to ascend a single octave, so it’s a great way to add a bar of shred while relocating to a new position on the fretboard for the next part of your solo.
It also sounds pretty damn slick.
But what’s really nice about this riff is that it only uses the first and second strings and the exact same frets are used on both strings. That makes it easy to remember and easy to execute.
We’re in everyone’s favorite shredding key, E minor, which is spelled E, F#, G, A, B, C, D. Begin on the E note located at the fifth fret of the B string and then ascend the scale in six-note stairs.
I’ve tabbed it out in the example above as a legato riff, which really makes this lick haul ass. To play it this way, pick only the first note in each triplet, then hammer-on the next two notes. The result is a fast, fluid run of notes that also looks cool as you play it.
This pattern also makes a terrific alternate picking lick. Start with a down stroke and use an “outside” picking style by alternating up-down-up-down all the way through.
Once you’re comfortable with all four positions, start adding some spice by mixing them up all over the place. The results can be pretty cool. I uploaded a full sheet of tablature examples with this post to help get you started. Yay! FREE TABS!
Dear U.S. Senators,
When you have allowed months of torture and rape to utterly disfigure and destroy someone, the only sensible and humane thing to do is to take that person out somewhere secluded and shoot them in the back of the head.
Since you’ve essentially allowed this healthcare bill to endure the very atrocities I’ve described, it is my sincere hope you will have enough integrity left in you to consign it to the same fate. Executions are seldom easy, but considering the jaw-dropping debauchery to which you’ve relentlessly subjected this bill, such paradoxical mercy is the only way I see for you to even look in the general direction of redemption. Poor old “Healthcare” Bill was once our friend, but now he desperately wails in anguish, pleading for final respite from the blind, relentless assault of Lieberman’s tiny but deceptively powerful political penis.
Our friend wanted to give us a Public Option so that even the poorest Americans could get necessary medical attention. You laughed in his face.
Our friend believed a Single-Payer system was another way we could get healthcare to the less fortunate and was shouted down for that, as well.
Our friend wanted to fix Medicare Part D so that drugs were acquired at a reasonable price and beneficiaries didn’t fall into the infamous, medicine-revoking “Donut Hole”. In response to that one, you simply farted (although, to your credit, you did lift your leg beforehand so the gesture wasn’t lost on anyone).
In short, our friend’s overall goal was to HELP THE AMERICAN POOR. And you had a serious problem with that.
It’s a noble goal – aiding the poor – and one that is right in line with the teachings of every major religion, including the one this country so openly embraces (despite Constitutional insistence it doesn’t). But how did you react to such Christian kindness? You got all coy and then suddenly goal-kicked poor Bill in the nuts by adding a mandate that everyone purchase healthcare from private companies.
So kill it. Kill it until it’s good and dead and literally nothing of it remains. Better to have no healthcare reform at all (for now) than to have a panty-waste bill with ruptured testicles limping through American history as a permanent false testament to how the poor and weak simply don’t deserve access to medical care.
You know what you must do. If it helps, think about it this way: if all of you vote it out, then killing our friend Bill will be more like a firing squad execution than a cold-blooded murder. And isn’t that how you politicos sleep at night – by reframing the untenable things so they can be better blamed on someone else?
Oh, and Mr. President, your recent rhetoric surrounding this bill worries me. You seem to be hedging. I have no doubt you recall making it unequivocally clear when you debated Hilary Clinton last January that you are deadset against an individual mandate, so I'm looking to you to keep your promise to veto this bill if it comes across your desk containing that clause.
Sincerely,
Kirk Starr
Your Employer
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
DG walked up to me and said he needed one of his “silly pretty pixshurs” because he wanted to “hiccup codajoe”.
“Why the sudden decision to hook up Dakota Joe with one of your celebrity pictures?” I asked.
“He sayd I wuz ‘damn’ cute. I am thinkee that is even cuter than Diblet.”
“Yeah, you know, I happen to think you’re the cutest kitteh on the planet.”
“So does codajoe, evindentedly. You gettee teh pixshur for me DG or wut?”
“Sure, but I'm guessing Dakota Joe thinks his own cat is cuter, Deej. And he just goes by DJ now. I don’t even think his name is really Joe.”
“Less talkee, more celery pity pixshur! And also a box to mail it in!”
“I’ll get you an envelope."
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Taking the paper trash out to the recycling bin, a familiar something caught my eye. I didn't need to examine it further; I knew exactly what it was. I went back inside and found DG in the kitchen lounging in a flat of drinking water.
“Say, you ever mail that photo to DJ?”
The Deej blinked. “M-hm.”
“Really? How? You don’t have any stamps. You can’t reach the mailbox.”
“I fond stamps in yur bedroom – dog ones and spacee ones..." He licked his left foreleg for a few moments, then continued, "...then I dressed it and put it with teh rest of teh mails.”
It all came together. “Ha! You put it in the paper recycling, DG! I almost threw it out...”
“Well mail it alreddy wuld you? It wuz sposed to be there a week ago!!!”
*sigh* There’s just no pleasing a cat.
Very sorry for the delay, DJ. It’s on its way now...
As much as I love the instant gratification and privacy provided by my digital camera, the one thing that continues to irritate me about digital photography technology is the insane amount of time that elapses between when the shutter button is depressed and when the shutter finally decides to work its soul-stealing magic.
I’m sure you’ve all been there. You see something you desperately need to preserve in photograph form, so you whip out your digital camera, quickly frame the shot, and depress the button...
...but by the time your camera finally does its little preparation dance and captures the image, the moment you so badly wished to immortalize has passed and all you’re left with is another useless photo of a dirty restroom stall.
While watching Zach give the cats a good workout by means of a high-power laser pointer, a thought occurred to me:
When used in a particular way, a laser pointer is essentially a virtual tether with which one can literally slam a cat against a wall.
You can also fling a cat down the stairs or even into a hapless victim’s lap as he sits distracted by his game of Super Smash Bros. Fact is, a cat will pretty much go anywhere a glowing red dot goes. They'll even do it in teams!
Whenever all four of us have to be away from the house at the same time, we make sure all the kittehs are closed off downstairs mainly because Dioji is a moody terrier and cannot be trusted. This past Thanksgiving Day was one of those times and Zach was assigned pet segregation detail. He proceeded to do this, believe it or not, by leading them all down in one big group with his laser pointer.
I was hell of impressed.
Alright, I know the title of the post made it sound like some major scientific breakthrough had been discovered. And sure, adding “major” might be too much, but Zachary’s discovery really is quite a breakthrough!
Have you ever tried to herd cats?
This much cute in one place might be dangerous. CimC could implode under the combined weight of DG's good looks and the incredible cuteness in this video. I only got a B in Physics, so don't hate on me if this blog suddenly gets sucked down some black hole of adorableness.
Squeeeee!
There’s a rather steep, winding road I take on the way to work that understandably narrows to a single lane on the downhill side. The speed limit correspondingly drops a little, as well. This all occurs shortly after a traffic light and for the next mile-and-a-half drivers are relegated to whatever position they were able to aggressively acquire during the furious Competition Merging that invariably occurs at this type of juncture.
It is the right lane that merges into the left, so you’ll usually see the BMW and CRX drivers choose it, particularly when they end up (oh-so-egregiously) stopped at the light. Their logic is simple: only the right lane provides the opportunity not to get stuck behind one of the left-lane lame-asses who lacked the foresight to buy a car that stuck to the road like an AFX* slot car. They crane their necks to watch for the cross-traffic light to turn yellow; it’s their cue to take the RPMs up to 1200 and shift their clutch-foot to the very edge of the pedal for instantaneous release.
Me, I’m one of the lame-asses, I guess. I seldom worry about my spot in the bizarre, unwritten hierarchy of competitive commuting. I’m of the opinion that making it to my destination alive, undamaged and sans citations is far more desirable than getting there seven seconds before everyone else. But you already knew I was a bit strange.
Anyway, this morning I did play the game because tooling down the hill was a dirty, fume-belching truck with a giant tank on the back proudly emblazoned with The Shit Bilge: We’ll Pump Out Your Poop! (or something like that; I didn’t have anything to write with at the time). The huge coil of corrugated PVC tubing verified what was inside that tank. I’m not sure if moving so slowly was also directly related to his occupation, but the fact wouldn’t surprise me.
For the record, I wasn’t the only one to pass him. I was behind at least a half dozen drivers making the same sensible move.
Here’s the thing, though. As I changed lanes and sped up to squeeze in front of him just before the guardrail could cave in my passenger door, I felt a little like an impatient teenager for whom driving like an asshole has become a requisite personality trait. But the guy in the sewer truck didn’t speed up to force me back behind him the way so many people do, nor did he tailgate me the rest of the way down the hill. He just took his time transporting his contaminated cargo, seemingly unmoved by the growing distance between himself and the crowd of cars in front of him.
I guess if you make your living sucking putrid body waste out of other peoples’ septic tanks, you’ve pretty much already broken and tamed your ego.
*Yeah, that’s right, I was an AFX kid. Big time. Had to save up just a little more chore money, but it was worth it not to settle for Tyco’s second-rate, schlocky slot cars.
Karin and I have been into this show called It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia since it started in 2005. It's a tad lowbrow sometimes and silly and Amanda absolutely despises it. Her refusal to even be in the room when it's on should probably be some sort of barometer for me, but the thing is, every time I watch an episode of this show I nearly bust a gasket laughing.
To wit...
